Memeorandum

July 31, 2013

Jim Treacher has some fun with MSNBC's Chris Hayes, who channeled his inner Fox Butterfield:

“What I find most frustrating is that what we have seen is
incarceration go up at the same that crime is going down. And yet the
fear level is still stoked, even though what we have is, objectively,
less [sic] murders every year, we have less crime, we are living in a
safer society, and we are putting more people in prison.”

Oh, keep up! Those talking points are so 2009. From the July 25 NY Times, totally safe even for MSNBC libs:

The prison population in the United States dropped in 2012 for the third
consecutive year, according to federal statistics released on Thursday,
in what criminal justice experts said was the biggest decline in the
nation’s recent history, signaling a shift away from an almost
four-decade policy of mass imprisonment.

The number of inmates in state and federal prisons decreased by 1.7
percent, to an estimated 1,571,013 in 2012 from 1,598,783 in 2011,
according to figures released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, an
arm of the Justice Department. Although the percentage decline appeared
small, the fact that it followed decreases in 2011 and 2010 offers
persuasive evidence of what some experts say is a “sea change” in
America’s approach to criminal punishment.

Three years! There will come a day when this prison decline does not come as news to our newsmen. But this is not that day!

McDonald's can afford to pay its workers a living wage without
sacrificing any of its low menu prices, according to a new study
provided to The Huffington Post by a University of Kansas researcher.

Doubling the salaries and benefits of all McDonald's employees -- from workers earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour to CEO Donald Thompson, whose 2012 compensation totaled $8.75 million
-- would cause the price of a Big Mac to increase just 68 cents, from
$3.99 to $4.67, University of Kansas research assistant Arnobio Morelix
told HuffPost. In addition, every item on the Dollar Menu would go up by
17 cents.

And how did he come to this conclusion?

Morelix looked at McDonald's 2012 annual report and discovered that
only 17.1 percent of the fast-food giant's revenue goes toward salaries
and benefits. In other words, for every dollar McDonald's earns, a
little more than 17 cents goes toward the income and benefits of its more than 500,000 U.S. employees.

Thus, if McDonald's executives wanted to double the salaries of all
of its employees and keep profits and other expenses the same, it would
need to increase prices by just 17 cents per dollar, according to
Morelix.

I don't suppose we can expect Huffers to actually read the annual report in question, but here it is. And what do we glean?

From the Consolidated Statement of Income (p. 30) we see that "Payroll and Employee Benefits" came to $4,710.3 (in millions, or $4,710,300,000, which is even past A-Rod territory.) Total Revenue was $27,567 (in millions). Dividing 4,710 by 27,567 yields 17.1%, which we take to be the 17% used by Morelix.

However! McDonalds reports a net revenue from both the stores it operates and its franchise fees. The McDonalds franchisors are separate businesses which pay a fee to McDonalds Corp and are responsible for their own payroll, as is discussed in the annual report (p. 13).

So Morelix has not included the payroll figure for the franchisees in this calculation. Is that a big problem? Huge, actually. From page 11 we see that their are 6,598 outlets run directly by McDonalds Corp and 27,882 franchised outlets. Sales from franchised outlets totalled $69,687 (in million) in 2012, which far exceeds the $18,602 (mm) revenue figure for company-operated stores. That $69 billion figure is condensed down to $8.9 billion of franchise revenue on the Consolidated Statement of Income (The rest of the $27,567 MM in total revenue comes from sales at McDonalds run stores).

Which leaves us where? Doubling all the salaries at McDonalds headquarters and in their 6,598 stores would be offset by a total revenue increase of 17%, but the franchisees won't be agreeing to pay more in franchise fees and won't be raising their payroll (the size of which we haven't found in this report) in the 27,882 stores they operate. And yes, that slides right past the question of how to deal with their international operations.

If I were inclined to press down this road I would compare the $18 billion of revenue from McDonalds run stores with the payroll figure of $4.7 billion; that ratio is 26%. By that calculation, McDonalds would need to raise all its prices by 26% at its own stores in order to double all of its direct payroll expenses, which presumably includes a lot of non-hamburger flippers at headquarters. Hey, 17%, 26%, de nada - that is only a 50% error and it's not my money anyway!

Or from a different tack - the McDonalds-operated stores average $2.8 million in sales per store. The franchisees average $2.5 million per store, so they are on average a bit smaller but close enough that maybe we can wave our hands and pretend they are the same. That suggests that if the franchisees cost structure looks like the parent company then they can double their payroll and recoup the additional expense by raising prices by 26%.

Of course, that is a big if. And it assumes that there are no elasticities - consumers don't switch to Wendy's, franchisees don't finally buy that expensive whiz-bang machine that eliminates two jobs, and so on. One might argue that if minimum wage legislation obliged Wendy's and other fast food chains to also raise payroll costs that all of them would be obliged to raise prices and some of the consumer substitution would be mitigated. One might also wonder why McDonalds and their franchisees have been so beneficient as to forebear a 26% price increase, taking all that new revenue straight to the bottom line. Have they forgotten to be greedy, or are they already charging as much as they think consumers will pay?

Moreever, there is yet another problem. The fundamental premise is that McDonalds customers will pay more, thereby raising the living standard of the McDonalds employees. That would be fine if Mitt Romney and his sons were over-represented in the McDonalds demographic, but I bet they aren't. My guess is that working- and middle-class families make up the bulk of McDonalds customers, which means the working class and middle class will be reaching into their non-capacious pockets to elevate the lifestyle of McDonalds workers, not all of whom are themselves in the working class. I don't want to say "Voodoo economics", but a regressive 'tax' to help those with jobs may not be the path to prosperity.

Get back to me when the workers are striking at Le Bernardin. And bring the real math.

Currently, a minimum wage McDonalds employee makes $7.25 per hour. The CEO makes $8.75 million.
But if the former were raised to $15 and the latter to $17.5 million,
the dollar menu would only have to become the $1.17 menu and the Big Mac
would go from $3.99 to $4.67, Morelix found.

If the CEO’s pay remained the same but low-wage workers earned more, the price difference for customers would be negligible.

We are talking about doubling a $4.7 billion payroll but in their estimation, saving $8.75 million by not raising the CEO pay would make room for negligible price hikes. Ok.

Back in reality, if we double the CEO pay then the reported "Payroll and Employee Benefits" as shown in the annual report would rise from $4,710.3 MM to $4,719.0 MM. Not quite a rounding error.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story
misrepresented Arnobio Morelix as a researcher for the University of
Kansas. Morelix is registered as a undergraduate student at the
university, according to University of Kansas School of Business
Communications Director Austin Falley.

Yup, that is what they say at the Daily Kansan. Would it be fair to say that libs will believe anything and print anything that fits The Narrative?

MORE ILLUMINATING MOMENTS IN NUMERACY: House Representative Keith Ellison (D, MN) loves the idea of McDonalds charging more to pay more:

Advertising executive Donny Deutsch pointed to a new study by Arnobio
Morelix, a research assistant at the University of Kansas, who found
that McDonald’s could pay its workers $15 an hour if it increased the
price of its Big Mac by 68 cents ($3.99 to $4.67) and increased its
Dollar Menu items by 17 cents.

“I would pay $0.17 for somebody to be able to feed their family,” Ellison stated.

Seventeen cents?!? Big spending from a Congressman making well over $100K. But here in reality, we are asking Joe Walmart to pay an extra dollar on a four dollar tab to boost the fortunes of Jane McDonald. Since a Big Mac meal already runs more than that, well, mangia!

A Big Mac miss by The Huffington Post

This affirms my faith in the power of positive hand-waving:

Worldwide, those franchisees took in $70 billion in revenue last
year, and US stores took in $31 billion of that. McDonald’s Corporation
doesn’t break out similar expense numbers for its franchisees, so the
best I can do is research from
Janney Capital Markets. It puts labor costs for US franchises at 24
percent of sales, which gibes with McDonald’s company-owned stores.
Janney estimates franchisee operating income at just 5 percent.

If Janney is right (and I’m a bit skeptical. Five percent margins
seem awfully low), McDonald’s franchisees in the US pay out, very
roughly, $7.4 billion in labor costs a year and make about $1.6 billion
in operating profit. Doubling pay without dipping into profit would mean
menu prices would have to rise 24 percent—and that’s assuming such
price increases wouldn’t hurt sales, which they would.

The defense rests in the show trial of the Fabulous Fabrice, the Goldman Sachs scapegoat for all the evils of the mortgage-backed securities and derivatives market.

Mr. Tourre’s legal team was visibly upbeat on Friday after Mr. Tourre
finished testifying. They felt they had successfully portrayed their
client as a junior cog in the Goldman machine, one of several thousand
vice presidents at the big Wall Street firm and hardly the villain the
S.E.C. has tried to portray him as.

The blushing virgins at aggrieved investor ACA weary me:

ACA executives have testified that had they known that the hedge fund
was betting against the trade, they would not have invested in it.

However...

While Mr. Tourre was not part of Ms. Kreitman’s call with Ms.
Schwartz, the S.E.C. has suggested that Mr. Tourre gave Ms. Kreitman the
wrong impression about Paulson & Company’s intentions.

Four days later, ACA met with representatives of Paulson &
Company and Goldman, including Mr. Tourre. Paolo Pellegrini, a senior
executive at Paulson & Company, testified he told ACA at that
meeting that his hedge fund was betting the housing market would crash
and that it wanted the trade in question to fail.

“That was the purpose of the meeting,” he told jurors.

While helpful to Mr. Tourre, Mr. Pellegrini was an argumentative
witness and in previous S.E.C. testimony has said he could not remember
what was said at various meetings. That may undercut his credibility.

Even after meeting with a representative of Paulson the ACA team couldn't figure out which way around Paulson was? Either the Paulson rep was lying in the meeting (and why isn't he indicted?) or the ACA people just didn't make an effort to pin this down, and only decided the information was material when it gave them leverage in a lawsuit.

I could see the jury deciding that they're all guilty so let's convict Tourre. Or they could decide they are all guilty, so why single out Tourre?

July 29, 2013

July 28, 2013

Barack Obama remains confident that when the government spends money to put people to work, jobs are created or saved. However, when asked about the Keystone project he is adamant that hiring people to build a pipeline won't create jobs. Let's cut to the Keystone EKonomist, from a July 24 NY Times interview:

NYT: A couple other quick subjects that are economic-related. Keystone
pipeline -- Republicans especially talk about that as a big job creator.
You've said that you would approve it only if you could be assured it
would not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon in the
atmosphere. Is there anything that Canada could do or the oil companies
could do to offset that as a way of helping you to reach that decision?

MR. OBAMA: Well, first of all, Michael, Republicans have said that this
would be a big jobs generator. There is no evidence that that’s true.
And my hope would be that any reporter who is looking at the facts would
take the time to confirm that the most realistic estimates are this
might create maybe 2,000 jobs during the construction of the pipeline --
which might take a year or two -- and then after that we’re talking
about somewhere between 50 and 100 [chuckles] jobs in a economy of 150
million working people.

NYT: Yet there are a number of unions who want you to approve this.

MR. OBAMA: Well, look, they might like to see 2,000 jobs initially. But that is a blip relative to the need.

Well, that won't be a blip to the people actually hired. But where is he getting his numbers, an intrepid reporter (but not our Jackie Calmes of the Times) will wonder. The State Department review of the Keystone project says this:

Construction of the proposed Project would generate temporary, positive socioeconomic impacts as a
result of local employment, taxes, spending by construction workers, and spending on construction goods and services. Including direct, indirect, and induced effects, the proposed Project would potentially support approximately 42,100 average annual jobs across the United States over a 1 to 2 year construction period (of which, approximately 3,900 would be directly employed in construction
activities).

So construction jobs are temporary - who knew? But 42,100 jobs seems like a lot more than 2,000. Is that still a blip, or is this Kerry/Clinton work product unreliable?

Maybe the anti-Keystone Cornell University Global Labor Institute can bail Obama out. This is from "Pipe Dreams?". Their approach, which Obama would defend vigorously in the context of increased government spending, is that spending money leads to jobs based on a predictable multiplier.

Thus, the incremental US spending associated with KXL project construction is only about $3 to $4 billion. Given a multiplier of 11 person-years per $1 million, this translates into total employment impacts of 33,000 to 44,000 person-years.

So a reasonable estimate of the total incremental US jobs from KXL construction is about one-third of the figure estimated in the Perryman study and used by industry to advocate for the construction of KXL. Moreover, any job impacts associated with KXL construction would be spread over 2 and more likely 3 years.

So the annual impacts are at most about 22,000 person-years of employment per year, for two years. But the annual impacts could also be as low as 11,000 person-years per year, for three years.

Wow, "as low as" only 11,000 jobs. Yet another blip? And still more than five times the figure Obama cited. The Cornell GLI goes on with a parade of horribles each of which might also cost jobs (higher gasoline prices, prized in other contexts, are now a jobs killer; oil spill clean-ups create jobs, as they note, but cost jobs elsewhere). However, none of that is quantified to a net final jobs estimate, unless my tired eyes deceive. And one wonders - will there really be a lot of oil spills during the construction phase? I would have thought that until the pipe is completed there won't be any oil spills, which means those prospective job-destroyers are further down the road.

I encourage eager reporters to track down the source of Obama's latest Keystone fantasy. I am leaning towards The Daily Kos but the Huffington Post is surely a contender.

UPDATE: From WaPo coverage:

While the White House could not say late Saturday what analysis Obama is
basing his 2,000 jobs estimate on, it appears he was referring to the
low-end estimate of a study done by the Cornell University Global Labor
Institute. That analysis, which uses TransCanada’s own estimates, assumes that each segment of the pipeline requires about 500 workers per segment.

...

Before the project was divided TransCanada estimated it would create 3,500 direct jobs for a two-year period,
after which point about 35 workers would operate the pipeline. Backers
of the pipeline say it could create anywhere from 20,000 to 100,000 jobs
when spinoff jobs are taken to into account, while the Cornell study
suggested any jobs stemming from the pipeline’s construction could be
outweighed by the environmental damage it caused, along with a possible
rise in Midwest gasoline prices.

So that would be only the direct construction jobs, without counting any jobs created or saved in support of those workers.

As to permanent jobs well, to be fair, the Barack Obama Library will probably create more than fifty eternal jobs. Geez, there will be at least fifty full-time positions in the "Speeches I Gave That Changed America And The World" wing. If they work out the health care coverage.

“If the economy is growing, everybody feels invested. Everybody feels as if we’re rolling in the same direction.”

The tide is high and he's holding on...

Will this prioritization of growth over stability and low inflation terrorize Wall Street?

Addressing for the first time one of his most anticipated decisions, Mr.
Obama said he had narrowed his choice to succeed Ben S. Bernanke as
chairman of the Federal Reserve to “some extraordinary candidates.” With
current fiscal policy measurably slowing the recovery, many in business
and finance have looked to the Fed to continue its expansionary
monetary policies to offset the drag.

Mr. Obama said he wanted someone who would not just work abstractly to
keep inflation in check and ensure stability in the markets. “The idea
is to promote those things in service of the lives of ordinary Americans
getting better,” he said. “I want a Fed chairman that can step back and
look at that objectively and say, Let’s make sure that we’re growing
the economy.”

This does not have to be bad news for Wall Street. QE Forever may boost asset prices forever. Let's see what gold does next week now that we know that Obama is looking for a Fed chairman (or woman!) who won't be watching inflation.

WHY WOULD THEY THINK THAT? This shows a certain Obamaesque oblivion to the impact of Affirmative Action pseudo-quotas:

A few days after the acquittal in the Trayvon Martin case prompted him
to speak about being a black man in America, Mr. Obama said the
country’s struggle over race would not be eased until the political
process in Washington began addressing the fear of many people that
financial stability is unattainable.

“Racial tensions won’t get better; they may get worse, because people
will feel as if they’ve got to compete with some other group to get
scraps from a shrinking pot,” Mr. Obama said.

EDMOND, Okla. — More than 500 years after Gutenberg, the Bible is having its i-moment.

For millions of readers around the world, a wildly successful free Bible app, YouVersion, is changing how, where and when they read the Bible.

Built by LifeChurch.tv,
one of the nation’s largest and most technologically advanced
evangelical churches, YouVersion is part of what the church calls its
“digital missions.” They include a platform for online church services
and prepackaged worship videos that the church distributes free. A
digital tithing system and an interactive children’s Bible are in the
works.

It’s all part of the church’s aspiration to be a kind of I.T. department
for churches everywhere. YouVersion, with over 600 Bible translations
in more than 400 languages, is by far the church’s biggest success. The
app is nondenominational, including versions embraced by Catholics, Russian Orthodox
and Messianic Jews. This month, the app reached 100 million downloads,
placing it in the company of technology start-ups like Instagram and
Dropbox.

July 26, 2013

One possible outcome of this debate is that the Republican House
passes a government-funding bill that doesn’t include money for
Obamacare, but then gives in to the Democratic Senate on the issue. At
that point the conservative groups that are pushing for defunding will
say Republican leaders have again betrayed them, and get back to the
vital work of raising donations off that idea.

That won’t be the
happiest of endgames for Republicans, but it would still be better than a
shutdown or default that failed to achieve their goals while inflicting
political damage on themselves -- and, in the case of default,
substantial economic damage on everyone else.

The repeal of Obamacare is a worthy and potentially popular cause, but it won’t be accomplished through sheer willpower.

A Zimmerman juror explains that only it was only the legal definition of murder that stood between George Zimmerman and a murder conviction.

Uh huh. And my housecat is a unicorn, except for the absence of hooves, a horn, and a few other minor variations from the standard.

FOLLOWING A BOOTH REVIEW: I think James Taranto is right and my snark is, hmm, contra-indicated. The juror is certainly entitled to her opinion, as long as she maintains a distinction between her opinion and the law. Which she did. Misleading edits notwithstanding.

Victor Davis Hanson creates a stir with his politically incorrect version of "The Talk" about racial profiling:

Holder noted in lamentation that he had to repeat to his own son the
lecture that his father long ago gave him. The sermon was about the
dangers of police stereotyping of young black males. Apparently, Holder
believes that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Yet
I fear that for every lecture of the sort that Holder is forced to give
his son, millions of non-African-Americans are offering their own
versions of ensuring safety to their progeny.

In my case, the
sermon — aside from constant reminders to judge a man on his merits, not
on his class or race — was very precise.

First, let me say that
my father was a lifelong Democrat. He had helped to establish a local
junior college aimed at providing vocational education for at-risk
minorities, and as a hands-on administrator he found himself on some
occasions in a physical altercation with a disaffected student. In
middle age, he and my mother once were parking their car on a visit to
San Francisco when they were suddenly surrounded by several
African-American teens. When confronted with their demands, he offered
to give the thieves all his cash if they would leave him and my mother
alone. Thankfully they took his cash and left.

I think that
experience — and others — is why he once advised me, “When you go to San
Francisco, be careful if a group of black youths approaches you.” Note
what he did not say to me. He did not employ language like “typical black person.” He did not advise extra caution about black women, the elderly, or the
very young — or about young Asian Punjabi, or Native American males. In
other words, the advice was not about race per se, but instead about
the tendency of males of one particular age and race to commit an
inordinate amount of violent crime.

Let us be direct -- in any other context we would automatically
recognize this "talk" as stupid advice. If I were to tell you that I
only employ Asian-Americans to do my taxes because "Asian-Americans do
better on the Math SAT," you would not simply question my sensitivity,
but my mental faculties. That is because you would understand that in
making an individual decision, employing an ancestral class of millions
is not very intelligent. Moreover, were I to tell you I wanted my son to
marry a Jewish woman because "Jews are really successful," you would
understand that statement for the stupidity which it is.

It would not be acceptable for me to make such suggestions (to say
nothing of policy) in an enlightened society -- not simply because they
are "impolite" but because they betray a rote, incurious and addled
intellect. There is no difference between my argument above and the
notion that black boys should be avoided because they are
overrepresented in the violent crime stats. But one of the effects of
racism is its tendency to justify stupidity.

No difference between a hiring decision, a marriage decisioon and a decision to avoid certain groups congregated on the street? TNC actually notes the key difference himself a bit further on in his post:

My point is that parents who regularly have to cope with violent crime understand the advantages of good, solid intelligence.

Knowledge is good. No kidding. And in choosing to hire an accountant all sorts of relevant intelligence can be gleaned during the interview process. Similarly, one has an opportunity to learn a bit about a prospective spouse during the dating process. But how does that analogy apply in the context of walking down the street in an unfamiliar city, as described by VDH? Unless TNC routinely passes down streets where the locals are handing out resumes, I suspect his experience is that, in a strange city, he has essentially no intelligence at all about the specific qualities of a group of young locals hanging on the next corner.

And yet he has to make choices, as do we all. Matt Yglesias offers an interesting 'What're the odds?' perspective:

I think what Cohen really means to be arguing isn't so much that
neither he nor Zimmerman are racists, but that racism is the correct
social and political posture. That white people have good reason to fear
black men, and that therefore all black men should be put in a
subordinate position. But as a logical argument, Cohen here is falling
afoul of very poor statistical inference. For example, the vast majority
of newspaper op-ed columnists in America are white men just like
Richard Cohen. But that doesn't mean it's reasonable to see a white man
walking down the street and assume he's a newspaper columnist. If you
look specifically at Jewish men, you'll see the stereotype that we are
disproportionately represented in the field of political commentary is
absolutely accurate. And yet it is still not reasonable to assume that
some randomly selected Jewish man is a professional political writer.
Even right here on the mean streets of Washington, D.C.—a city
that's legendary for its high rate of punditry—a clear majority of
Jewish men are not pundits. It's just a very rare occupation.

By the same token, the fact that young black men are
disproportionately likely to be involved in violent crime in no way
licenses the inference that you should stop random black men on the
street and begin treating them like criminals.

That is interesting in terms of police behavior and 'stop and frisk' but not really helpful to private citizens trying to walk home safely. However, if the statistical point is that lightning rarely strikes, then what, one wonders, is the Yglesias position on buckling one's seat belt? In forty years of driving I've never needed one, yet I buckle up anyway.

One also wonders whether risk and return enter into a Yglesian calculation. Passing up a potentially great accountant or marriage partner on the basis of pre-suppositions that could be tested against available evidence carries a personal cost, so 'stupid' is an appropriate word to describe that. But the cost of crossing the street to avoid possible street thugs is what - a lost opportunity to shake the hands of strangers and advance race relations? The cost of locking one's car doors if a stranger approaches is what - a failed opportunity to make a life-long friend?

This is tricky - we are balancing the high probability of giving a small offense to the kids on the corner or the approaching stranger versus the small probability of avoiding a beatdown. Their annoyance, my pain. Hmm - is it OK to lock the car doors if the "click" is inaudible?

How does this play out in real life? When I lived in DC back in the
1990s, if I was walking back to my apartment on Capitol Hill after dark —
the Hill was not nearly as safe then as it is now — I would cross the
street if I saw young black men dressed like street thugs coming at me.
Those men could have been fine upstanding Christian gentlemen, but I
wasn’t willing to take that chance. Had I passed them at high noon, I
wouldn’t have given them a second thought. But at night, in that
neighborhood, with them wearing those clothes, I made a choice. Had they
been black men in office wear, I wouldn’t have given them a second
look. The fact is, they fit the visual and demographic profile of the
overwhelming majority of street criminals in Washington, DC, in those
days. Chances are every time I did that, I was making an inaccurate
negative judgment of those teenagers. But you know, given what was going
on in DC at the time — e.g., a friend and co-worker was made to lie
face down with his girlfriend in front of their Capitol Hill house while
a black male thug held a pistol to their heads as he robbed them — I
was willing to accept the risk of having committed thoughtcrime.

If a teenage white male chose to cut his hair and present himself
like a skinhead on the streets of a city in which there had been lots of
skinhead attacks on minorities, would you really say that a black,
Hispanic, Asian or Jew would be wrong to cross the street at night when
he saw white guys who fit the visual and demographic profile of
skinheads coming? I wouldn’t.

If buckling a seat belt is a good idea even though the risk of an accident is low, why is crossing the street to avoid a group of street youths a bad idea?

A lot of the reaction to the VDH 'Talk' is nitpicking. For example, here is Andrew Sullivan:

Treating random strangers as inherently dangerous because of their age, gender and skin color is a choice to champion fear over reason, a decision to embrace easy racism over any attempt to overcome it.

It’s also spectacularly stupid.

I can fully understand and appreciate TNC’s incandescent, yet reasoned, rage at the piece. Do yourself a favor and read it in full.
But Ta-Nehisi’s core point is that making such blanket warnings about
an entire group of human beings is just dumb if you actually care about
the safety of your kids. It puts the race/gender/age category before all
other obvious contexts: neighborhood, street, school, college, inner
city, distant suburb, daytime, night, crowded places, dark streets, and
the actual observed behavior of the young black man.

Maybe I am just a far more sophisticated reader than Mr. Sullivan can imagine, but when VDH wrote "When you go to San Francisco, be careful if a group of black youths approaches you.” I was able to infer that we were not talking about a group of young men inside a busy office building, an art exhibit or a college library. Since the topic was street crime in unfamiliar cities ("When you go to San Francisco" was a helpful clue), I managed to make the leap to inferring that VDH was operating in the context of unfamiliar streets in unfamiliar cities.

But let me propose a different puzzle. We are back in college and it is the first day of science lab in the big course that will be critical for graduate school and professional prospects. Our test subject, Johnny, walks into the classroom and sees five empty seats; whoever he sits next to will be his lab partner for the semester, with significant likely impact on his final grade. High stakes!

Seat A is next to a large, athletic-looking no-neck white guy in the back of the room. Johhny knows the school's football team has a lot of sway in the admission process and a lot of the jocks are a lot more impressive on the field than in the classroom.

Seat B is adjacent to a petite Asian girl. (Does your answer change if it is an Asian guy?)

Seat C is next to a young Thurston Howell III look-alike (or a young John Kerry). Legacies do get a preferential admission atr this school.

Seat D is next to a generic white bread male.

Seat E is next to a conventionally dressed black male. And since you ask, this school has preferential admissions based on race diversity.

Johnny (who is a boring white guy like me) has ten seconds to choose. What partner gives him the best chance of a good grade this semester?

Human beings generalize all the time, ahead of time, about everyone and
everything. A large part of it may even be hard-wired. At some point in
our evolution, being able to know beforehand who was friend or foe was
not merely a matter of philosophical reflection. It was a matter of
survival. And even today it seems impossible to feel a loyalty without
also feeling a disloyalty, a sense of belonging without an equal sense
of unbelonging. We're social beings. We associate. Therefore we
disassociate. And although it would be comforting to think that the one
could happen without the other, we know in reality that it doesn't. How
many patriots are there who have never felt a twinge of xenophobia?

This comes close to endorsing deplorable racism. But no worries - he quickly veers off into nonsense:

Of course by hate, we mean something graver and darker than this kind of
lazy prejudice. But the closer you look at this distinction, the
fuzzier it gets. Much of the time, we harbor little or no malice toward
people of other backgrounds or places or ethnicities or ways of life.
But then a car cuts you off at an intersection and you find yourself
noticing immediately that the driver is a woman, or black, or old, or
fat, or white, or male. Or you are walking down a city street at night
and hear footsteps quickening behind you. You look around and see that
it is a white woman and not a black man, and you are instantly relieved.
These impulses are so spontaneous they are almost involuntary. But
where did they come from? The mindless need to be mad at someone --
anyone -- or the unconscious eruption of a darker prejudice festering
within?

I deplore these false choices - hands up if you feel equally threatened by a woman and a man. I don't see any hands...

But just for myself, if I am not going to be offered any other clues about the setting, I would feel more threatened by a black man than a white man (and a white woman not at all). That is based purely on crime statistics and not some sense of racial superiority; if dress clues suggested it was a black doctor or a white Hells Angel, I would switch my pick. As to what I would do differently based on that subtle risk analysis, well, not much - I wouldn't duck, roll and lay down covering fire just becasue a black guy was on the sidewalk behind me, if that is what you are worried about.

AND WHO ARE THE MULTICULTURALISTS RESPECTING DIVERSITY NOW? From NK in the comments:

And that's
what any thinking person does in public places when the only
information you have is the behavior adopted by people who are strangers
to you. In fact,
it is cultural arrogance to think that somene you don't know thinks and
behaves just as you do. Simply not true in our vast diverse society.

And staying away from certian neighborhoods? OMG! From jim:

I
avoid whole cities and neighborhoods in large cities so metaphorically I
am "crossing the street" to avoid entire black population centers.

Well, he is choosing to avoid high crime areas, but the map looks the same.

Which reminds me of a story... back in the high crime days of New York city I had a friend who was prepping for a multi-day Grand canyon hike by back-packing all over Manhattan. He told us that one evening he went up to Harlem and hung around on a street corner. Since this guy looked as Irish as a potato, we asked him whether that worked out well. "Yeah, no one hassled me" he said. "In fact, after a few minutes the corner sort of cleared out and everyone left. I think they figured I was a narc or something."

July 23, 2013

Anthony Weiner, aka "Carlos Danger", is back in hot water but claims he will stay in the Mayoral race. I guess Democrats will get the candidate they deserve.

WHO CAN DISAGREE? From bgates:

Some
people are going to use this scandal to try to portray all Democrats as
sexual predators, but I don't think it's fair to lump them all in with
Tony Weiner and Bob Filner and Eliot Spitzer and Tony Villaraigosa and
John Edwards and Jim McGreevy and Eric Massa and Tim Mahoney and Mel
Reynolds and Bill Clinton and Gary Condit and Gary Hart and Gerry Studs
and Ted Kennedy and John Kennedy and....

July 22, 2013

The NY Times on Sunday offered a long piece purporting to examine the latest outrage being perpetrated by Goldman Sachs upon a hapless, helpless public:

A Shuffle of Aluminum, but to Banks, Pure Gold

Groan - commodity speculation? I am confident there are some serious issues here related to the appropriate lines of business for a firm operating with an implicit Federal backstop. However, based on my experience in reading Times coverage of areas within my personal expertise, I am also grimly confident that when the Times covers commerce they leave their comfort zone when they move beyond publishing and women's fashion. OK, I'll give them men's fashion too.

The Times introduces an arithmetic problem in the early going, which was a bit of a blow on a Sunday morning:

Only a tenth of a cent or so of an aluminum can’s purchase price can be
traced back to the strategy [described earlier]. But multiply that amount by the 90 billion
aluminum cans consumed in the United States each year — and add the tons
of aluminum used in things like cars, electronics and house siding —
and the efforts by Goldman and other financial players has cost American
consumers more than $5 billion over the last three years, say former
industry executives, analysts and consultants.

Say it with me, Dr. Evil: $5 BILLION DOLLARS! And that figure entrances The Gawker and Yves Smith, both of whom attribute it to Goldman as profit rather than the consumer as added expense.

Based on published market prices, the value of primary metal production was $4.32 billion.

That was for 2,000,000 metric tons of primary consumption. A lot of aluminum is also recycled and some is imported, so "Apparent consumption" in the United States for 2012 was estimated at 4,520,000 metric tons. That has a total market value, at their figure of $0.98 per pound, of roughly $10 billion. Consumption was a bit less in 2011 and 2010 but average prices were a bit higher; some quick arithmetic gives me an estimate of $26 billion for total aluminum consumption in the US in the last three years.

And $5 billion of that went from the sheeple to Goldman Sachs? Scandalous! But wait - what happened to "Only a tenth of a cent or so of an aluminum can’s purchase price can be
traced back to the strategy...". "Only" hardly seems appropriate if the net impact of this price manipulation is a 20% price increase.

So what does an aluminum can cost, anyway? Well, one can weighs 15 grams, or about half an ounce. 16 ounces to a pound implies 32 cans per pound. And this source says 33 cans per pound, so so far, so good.

At roughly a dollar a pound for aluminum, one can has about 3 cents worth of metal. Even with processing cots of zero, the one-tenth of a cent described by the Times is nowhere near 20% of the total cost; it is more like 3.3%, actually.

This discrepancy does not boost my confidence, which was low at the outset of the story. Further diminishing my confidence is this:

Because Metro International charges rent each day for the stored metal,
the long queues caused by shifting aluminum among its facilities means
larger profits for Goldman. And because storage cost is a major
component of the “premium” added to the price of all aluminum sold on
the spot market, the delays mean higher prices for nearly everyone, even
though most of the metal never passes through one of Goldman’s
warehouses.

Aluminum industry analysts say that the lengthy delays at Metro
International since Goldman took over are a major reason the premium on
all aluminum sold in the spot market has doubled since 2010. The result
is an additional cost of about $2 for the 35 pounds of aluminum used to
manufacture 1,000 beverage cans, investment analysts say, and about $12
for the 200 pounds of aluminum in the average American-made car.

Wel, $2 per 1000 cans is 0.2 cents per can, which is twice their earlier estimate. But $2 on 35 pounds of aluminum valued at $35 is still only 5.7%, not 20%.

$12 per 200 pounds of aluminum (at $1/lb) in a car is a percentage of 12/200 or, hey, 6%. Well, they are at least providing a consistent estimate, even if it is just one-third of their eye-catching "$5 billion" figure. And sure, $1.7 billion of excess costs is, well, excessive. Of course, the notion that all these storage fees represent pure profit is untested - one might think that storage ought to cost something.

What the Times seems to have discovered is the Twilight struggle between end-users and speculators. Just what was meant to happen when the global economy hit the skids in 2008? Aluminum producers could (a) stop mining bauxite, the raw material, (b) stop smelting bauxite into aluminum, or (c) make the aluminum and store it (or sell it to speculators willing to do just that) in hopes of higher prices down the road. Depending on the material, storage may be the least expensive option (As an alternative example, Saudi Arabia simply pumps less oil during price slumps, but storing refined oil is problematic.)

With a proper futures market mining and smelting can be smoothed out a bit and "excess" production simply stored. Speculators took advantage of low interest rates to do just that with a number of metals. End users naturally squawk because these "hoarders" are "driving up prices", which is undoubtedly correct - if producers were obliged to sell all of their output despite a collapse in demand, either prices would plunge more than they did, or the expense of shuttering mines and smelters and laying off workers would be incurred.

The idea that any of this is new, or only began when Goldman entered the market in 2010 is absurd. The Times is promoting this now because there will be a Senate hearing on Tuesday and the Democratic chair wants some attention. Mission accomplished!

A trade group representing brewers
is urging the London Metal Exchange to take steps to reduce
warehouse backlogs that beermakers say boost the cost of
aluminum used to make drinks cans.

The Beer Institute in Washington pressed the exchange to
“end restrictive and outdated warehousing rules and practices
that are interfering with normal supply and demand dynamics,”
according to a statement provided yesterday by Christopher
Thorne, a spokesman for the group. Members include MillerCoors
LLC and Anheuser-Busch InBev NV (ABI)’s Anheuser-Busch unit, according
to the organization’s website.

...

Warehouse queues for aluminum have grown as more metal gets
tied up in financing deals that typically involve a simultaneous
purchase of metal for delivery in the near future and a sale for
later delivery that takes advantage of a market in contango,
where prices rise into the future.

The premium buyers pay to obtain aluminum in the U.S.
climbed to a record 12 cents to 13 cents a pound this week,
according to Austin, Texas-based researcher Harbor Intelligence.

If the normal premium is 6 cents per pound than the Goldman premium is at the 6% figure the Times seems to be using.

Cranky Congressman. And let me endorse the notion that there are some real issues here, even if the $5 billion figure is just NY Times hype and mirrors.

Let’s get something straight from the
outset: before you beat up on me for running a warehouse business, cast
your mind back to 2008, when the economic downturn slammed metal demand.
Who stepped in to provide a home for all the excess supply? The
warehouse firms did.

So don’t tell me we’re the bad guys.
If we hadn’t reacted so quickly and efficiently to give you space to
store metal, LME prices would probably be a lot lower than they are
today.
Do you know how long I had to wait for this? The business is cyclical.
For many years, my sheds looked like empty, paved football fields.
Some of us went into the logistics game. Others stored household items
and electronics to claw back a little of the losses. Some of us didn’t
have any metal in the sheds at all. It was a really tough time. Nobody
paid us for just existing.
Now times have changed, and suddenly I’m getting heat from all
directions.
One of the consequences of the steady inflow of metal to my warehouses
is that sometimes there’s a wait to get it out again. What did you
expect?

Headscratching from October 3 2012:

The storage of London Metal Exchange-approved metal has probably never been so controversial.

Whether you like the queues or not, the fact remains that warehousing firms appear to operate within the LME rules.

Of the 26 companies that operate warehouses in 37 different locations
around the world, none has ever been found to have breached LME rules
governing load-out rates, breached Chinese walls or failed to maintain
their LME-approved facilities according to exchange requirements.

Neither has a consumer failed to get enough metal to run its operations
effectively, including an enforced shutdown due to metal being stuck in
an outbound queue in Detroit or Vlissingen, where companies each store more than 900,000 tonnes.

In fact, producers have found a home for their metal during a downturn,
traders and banks have found a lucrative new income stream in the form
of financing deals, and warehouse owners have never had quite such a
bonanza.

Ultimately, metal in financing deals is still available – it just has a
price attached. The rapid rise in premiums for physical delivery is just
one part of the phenomenon.

Although it can be argued that everything links back to long waiting
times to access metal, premiums are still at elevated levels across the
world and in locations where no queues exist.

If nobody is actually doing anything technically wrong – and nobody is
really struggling to get metal for consumption – then what is all the
fuss about?

Something doesn’t smell quite right, but nobody can really put their
finger on what it is. If the firms are operating within the rules, then
do the rules need changing?

Looks like manipulation, or something - in New Orleans the warehouses have long queues but still want more metal:

New Orleans warehousing firms are offering
lucrative incentives for copper to be put into storage in their sheds,
which already have huge queues for material, traders said.

A total of 4,525 tonnes of copper
went into the city's London Metal Exchange-approved warehouses last week
alone, with parcels of Chilean metal being taken into stock on
incentives of more than $100 a tonne.
The high incentives could create a new flashpoint in the debate about
warehousing because owners of metal in New Orleans warehouses are
already having to wait about six months to obtain their metal, people
familiar with the issue told Metal Bulletin.
“There’s a concerted effort to buy the Chilean material that is floating
around to put into New Orleans warehouses and create a queue,” a trader
whose firm is active in physical copper in the region said. “Incentives
of over $100 are being offered, and it’s simply a game to tighten the
market,” the trader added.

If we look at
aluminium, there is currently, let’s say, something more than 10 million
tonnes of metal sitting in long-term storage, taking advantage of the
economic situation I describe above.

If circumstances were not as they are, I believe that post-2008, the
price would have dropped further (not being supported by warehouse-trade
buying), which would have resulted in more and swifter production cuts.

That would have helped to balance supply and demand, which, after all, is what the fluctuating futures price normally does.

Instead, not only have production cuts been delayed, but stock is also a
burgeoning stock which will serve to depress future prices when demand
climbs again.

In other words, a well-meaning attempt to ease the financial crisis will
have serious knock-on effects in the future, and that is the problem the warehouse trade and its attendant queues is telling us exists.

The premium slid to 11.8 to 12 cents a pound this week from
a record 12 to 13 cents, Jorge Vazquez, managing director of the
Austin, Texas-based researcher, said by e-mail today. Storage
incentives dropped to 8.6 cents a pound from 10.5 cents and are
poised to slide further, he said.

Since 2010, the additional cost to aluminum users is about $3 billion
annually, according to the Beer Institute, a Washington-based trade
group that represents brewers.

Buyers have to pay premiums over
the LME benchmark prices even with a glut of aluminum being produced.
Premiums in the U.S. surged to a record 12 cents to 13 cents a pound in
June, almost doubling from 6.5 cents in mid-2010, according to the most
recent data available from Austin, Texas-based researcher Harbor Intelligence.

So the machinations of Goldman et al have raied the premium by about 6 cents per pound, which is line with the 6% figure we gleaned from the NY Ties numbers. But now the Beer Institute is saying that the annual global cost is $3 billion? Or is that the US domestic cost?

If it is domestic, that is double the NY Times $5 billion figure and won't be right. The global market for aluminum is about 50 million metric tons, or about $100 billion (Yes, I am surprised by how small the US share is). So if Goldman is adding 6% to the cost, that should be $6 billion per year, not $3 billion.

I will square the circle by asserting that China is both a large producer and large consumer and may be insulated from this premium play. In which case, maybe half the global market is suffering a 6% distortion totalling $3 billion per year.

Well - if the US is half of the non-Chinese market (its not) then we can approach that $5 billion figure. My BS detector remains in the red.

July 21, 2013

OK, this is quite amazing: Dean Baker
catches the WaPo editorial page claiming that we have $3.8 trillion in
unfunded state and local pension liabilities. Say it in your best Dr.
Evil voice: THREE POINT EIGHT TRILLION DOLLARS. Except the study the WaPo cites very carefully says that it’s $3.8 trillion in total liabilities, not unfunded; unfunded liabilities are only $1 trillion.

I’ll be curious to see how the paper’s correction policy works here.

We can only hope and wonder whether the WaPo editorial page maintains a higher standard than Krugman himself. On the topic of pension scares, let's flash back to March of 2009, again at Krugman's NY Times blog:

“Dow 36,000″ and your pension

So in 2007 the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation — which stands behind corporate pensions — switched from bonds only to lots of stocks,
buying in at, natch, the peak of the market. Oops. And this is big
stuff: the Bush administration may have left us all a gratuitous loss of
hundreds of billions.

Say it with me in your best Dr. Evil voice - "HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS".

Except not. The PBGC had announced a plan to modify its asset allocation to increase their equity exposure but had not yet done so (believe it or not, big bureaucracies don't turn on a dime.) Still, when given a choice between bashing Bush specifically and conservatives generally or doing a bit of research, we can see the path Krugman chose.

As to the corrections policy at the Krugman blog, the guiding policy seems to be "Move On".

July 20, 2013

July 19, 2013

I fear that neither the First Hypothesizer nor his diligent staffers read the InstaPundit. If they did, we would be spared such embarrassing hypotheticals as Barack Obama's ruminations on the Zimmerman case [transcript]:

"If a white male teen would have been involved in this scenario," he
said, "both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different."

Well. When Roderick Scott shot Chris Cervini in upstate New York in 2009 the aftermath was somewhat different in that Scott was promptly arrested and charged. However, Scott was eventually acquited on self-defense grounds, just as Zimmerman was. A a quirk of Stand Your Ground? Hardly - New York is a "duty to retreat" state.

Oh, yeah - Cervini was white and Sott was black. Go figure.

Whatever. We don't expect the First Panderer to offer either facts or leadership in a situation like this.

July 17, 2013

I am shocked that the shooting of Chris Cervini by Roderick Scott was overlooked for so long by so many (but not all!) during the Zimmerman hoop-la. Geez, imagine if a black man intent on stopping crime shot a white kid. Or rather than imagine, check this case from upstate New York that unfolded during 2009:

Late Friday evening, a Monroe County jury reached a unanimous verdict in the trial of Roderick Scott: not guilty of manslaughter in the first degree. Scott had gunned down a teenage hoodlum who had been breaking into cars in his neighborhood. The prosecution portrayed it as an act of vigilante behavior run amok; Scott and his defense team presented the incident as the unfortunate result of reasonable behavior by a concerned citizen paired with the foolishness of a teenager under the influence of alcohol, drugs and bad peers.

The kids were caught in the act of breaking into cars and had the drug/alcohol thing, so Scott had that going for him. On the other hand, Scott "had the build of a football player", was never actually struck by any of the teens, and managed to shoot the dead boy twice, once in the back. Ooops.

Unlike Zimmerman, Scott was promptly arrested. Like Zimmerman, he was eventually acquited by a jury that apparently felt his self-defense argument created reasonable doubt.

Here is some eerily prescient speculation from 2009:

Had this same series of events occurred with a different cast of characters, could we expect the public and, more important, the jury, to treat the actors the same way? In this case, Scott was an African American man, his victim a white teenaged male. Had the race of these two been reversed -- a white man shooting an African American youth -- would the trial have received more attention? Would motives have been scrutinized more closely? Would conservative commentators rallied to the shooter's defense (because you know how criminally-inclined those youth are...)? Would activists have championed the cause of the victim as yet another casualty of stereotypes and bigotry? Difficult to say, but all fair questions to ask. Perhaps this community was lucky, in a way, that the characters were cast as they were.

I guess we have some answers there.

Meanwhile, after all their hyperventilating about the hideous Stand Your Ground law in Florida, let's take a nano-second to review the entirety of the NY Times coverage of this upstate New York case:

That was easy. Hello, Charles Blow? Helloooooo?

PILING ON: The DoJ has time on its hands and is trolling for tips on a private citizen without any of those vexing warrants or indictments or the sorts of things that we normally associate with the FBI's Most Wanted list. Well, if they want to investigate acquited citizens, maybe we can tip them off to the Roderick Scott case.

FWIW, my guess is that numbers are probably not rigged. As the Times eventually explains, NY State had already gone through the notorious death spiral in the individual market, so ObamaCare's individual mandate and subsidies brought them out [Sarah Kliff of WonkBlog concurs]:

State insurance regulators say they have approved rates for 2014 that
are at least 50 percent lower on average than those currently available
in New York. Beginning in October, individuals in New York City who now
pay $1,000 a month or more for coverage will be able to shop for health
insurance for as little as $308 monthly. With federal subsidies, the
cost will be even lower.

Supporters of the new health care law, the Affordable Care Act, credited
the drop in rates to the online purchasing exchanges the law created,
which they say are spurring competition among insurers that are
anticipating an influx of new customers. The law requires that an
exchange be started in every state.

Well, it is not the exchanges that are driving prices down. The explanation comes in paragraph seven:

“We’re seeing in New York what we’ve seen in other states like
California and Oregon — that competition and transparency in the
marketplaces are leading to affordable and new choices for families,”
said Joanne Peters, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human
Services.

No, that isn't it either, but for Times readers, isn't it pretty to think so? One last try, paragraph eighteen and following:

For years, New York has represented much that can go wrong with
insurance markets. The state required insurers to cover everyone
regardless of pre-existing conditions, but did not require everyone to
purchase insurance — a feature of the new health care law — and did not
offer generous subsidies so people could afford coverage.

With no ability to persuade the young and the healthy to buy policies,
the state’s premiums have long been among the highest in the nation. “If
there was any state that the A.C.A. could bring rates down, it was New
York,” said Timothy Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee
University who closely follows the federal law.

Mr. Jost and other policy experts say the new health exchanges appear to
be creating sufficient competition, particularly in states that have
embraced the exchanges and are trying to create a marketplace that
allows consumers to shop easily.

Earlier in the story, these estimates were offered:

The new premium rates do not affect a majority of New Yorkers, who
receive insurance through their employers, only those who must purchase
it on their own. Because the cost of individual coverage has soared,
only 17,000 New Yorkers currently buy insurance on their own. About 2.6
million are uninsured in New York State.

State officials estimate as many as 615,000 individuals will buy health
insurance on their own in the first few years the health law is in
effect. In addition to lower premiums, about three-quarters of those
people will be eligible for the subsidies available to lower-income
individuals.

So the mandate and the subsidies are greatly expanding the pool of buyers and ending the death spiral, in which only the sickest and the wealthiest bought insurance prior to an actual need. This is not a matter of creating new competition, it is a matter ofmandating (and subsidizing) new customers.

MORE: Avik Roy of NRO thinks the Times is misoverestimating the current cost of individual insurance in NY.

“These laws try to fix something that was never broken. There has
always been a legal defense for using deadly force if — and the ‘if’ is
important — if no safe retreat is available. But we must examine laws
that take this further by eliminating the common-sense and age-old
requirement that people who feel threatened have a duty to retreat,
outside their home, if they can do so safely. By allowing and perhaps
encouraging violent situations to escalate in public, such laws
undermine public safety,” Holder said.

Stand Your Ground was not invoked by the Zimmerman defense team because a person flat on his back getting punched in the face has no reasonable means of retreat.

The sliver of a point made by Holder is that prior to being assaulted, Zimmerman might have felt that he could safely remain outside his car in his own neighborhood, protected by his wits and his gun (not to mention the imminent arrival of the police).

Had Florida law mirrored New York and included a duty to retreat, Zimmerman might have understood that if he felt at all threatened in his own neighborhood then he had no legal right to defend himself with lethal force and needed to withdraw. So one might argue that it was the Stand Your Ground law that gave Zimmerman the confidence to wait outside his car, rather than inside it.

AG Holder apparently believes that pre-emptive surrender to the threat of violence enhances public safety. So if some seeming punks (I apologize for using what we have just learned is a racially charged word) are hanging around the local playground, well, the stalwart citizens had better simply leave, perhaps after a quick, useless call to 911.

Oddly, the NY Times just ran a piece explaining how stalwart citizens can greatly assist the local police in their efforts to reclaim neighborhoods:

Near Spring Creek, East Brooklyn Congregations,
a neighborhood alliance, has built fine rows of prefabricated town
houses that would not look out of place in a trendy Berlin neighborhood.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority agreed to run a new express
bus from here to the No. 3 subway line in East New York. There are new
schools, supermarkets, parks, apartment buildings.

Michael Gecan of E.B.C. has organized here for decades. He is not
inclined to discount the police. They helped to reclaim these streets,
opened the door for the civic change that has transformed a city.

Neither, however, is he inclined to discount his own members, the
pastors, teachers, nurses, transit workers and small-business owners
who, at great risk to themselves, worked with the police to identify
drug dealers and gangbangers and so reclaim this territory.

“Good reinforces good reinforces good,” he says. “We’re approaching that exalted state known as normal.”

This happened in New York, with its strict gun laws that disarm the law-abiding and its duty to retreat which applies to the law-abiding. Federalism! (As emphasized by NK).

The Community Organizer-in-Chief and his right-hand man spring into action on the Zimmerman case:

The U.S. Department of Justice
on Monday afternoon appealed to civil rights groups and community
leaders, nationally and in Sanford, for help investigating whether a
federal criminal case might be brought against George Zimmerman for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, one advocate said.

The DOJ has also set up a public email address to take in tips on its civil rights investigation.

No Twitter account? No "#GetZimmerman"? Strangely old school, while tha target demo is new school.

Since the Civil Rights division of the DoJ apparently has plenty of free time, I imagine they would welcome tips on the New Black Panther non-case. And I am sure the agit-propers from the right could fill their inbox Fast, and Furiously.

As to whether this how we normally treat private citizens who have recently been acquited of a crime, well, its a New America. Well, I say that - pandering from Hillarity is not new. But something like leadership, or at least a bit of truth-telling from Mr. Peanut surely is.

July 15, 2013

The NY Times editors won't let reality or their own reporting intrude on their fantasies about the Zimmerman trial and acquital:

Trayvon Martin’s Legacy

..

The jury reached its verdict after having been asked to consider Mr.
Zimmerman’s actions in light of Florida’s now-notorious Stand Your
Ground statute [That is technically correct insofar as "Stand Your Ground" is part of the overall explanation to the jury of justifiable and excusable force]. Under that law, versions of which are on the books in
two dozen states, a person may use deadly force if he or she “reasonably
believes” it is necessary to prevent death or great bodily harm — a low
bar that the prosecutors in this case fought in vain to overcome.

These laws sound intuitive: who would argue that you may not protect
yourself against great harm? But of course, the concept of “reasonable
belief” is transformed into something deadly dangerous when firearms are
involved. And when the Stand Your Ground laws intersect with lax
concealed-carry laws, it works essentially to self-deputize anyone with a
Kel-Tec 9 millimeter and a grudge.

S 35.10 Justification; use of physical force generally.
The use of physical force upon another person which would otherwise
constitute an offense is justifiable and not criminal under any of the
following circumstances:

...

6. A person may, pursuant to the ensuing provisions of this article,
use physical force upon another person in self-defense or defense of a
third person, or in defense of premises, or in order to prevent larceny
of or criminal mischief to property, or in order to effect an arrest or
prevent an escape from custody...

And they provide more detail on self-defense. My emphasis again, with comments as to the applicability to the Zimmerman case in brackets.:

1. A person may, subject to the provisions of subdivision two, use
physical force upon another person when and to the extent he or she
reasonably believes such to be necessary to defend himself, herself or a
third person from what he or she reasonably believes to be the use or
imminent use of unlawful physical force by such other person, unless:

(a) The latter's conduct was provoked by the actor with intent to
cause physical injury to another person [The state failed to prove that Zimmerman initiated the confrontation, unless we accept their notion that it is illegal to exit one's car]; or

(b) The actor was the initial aggressor; except that in such case the
use of physical force is nevertheless justifiable if the actor has
withdrawn from the encounter and effectively communicated such
withdrawal to such other person but the latter persists in continuing
the incident by the use or threatened imminent use of unlawful physical
force [the state failed to prove it was not Zimmerman getting battered on the sidewalk and screaming for help]; or

(c) The physical force involved is the product of a combat by
agreement not specifically authorized by law.[N/A]

2. A person may not use deadly physical force upon another person
under circumstances specified in subdivision one unless:

(a) The actor reasonably believes that such other person is using or
about to use deadly physical force. Even in such case, however, the
actor may not use deadly physical force if he or she knows that with
complete personal safety, to oneself and others he or she may avoid the
necessity of so doing by retreating [This is their favored alternative to Stand Your Ground, but of course it has no relevance when the shooter is lying on the ground screaming for help]; except that the actor is under no
duty to retreat if he or she is:

[The following exceptions would not apply to Zimmerman]

(i) in his or her dwelling and not the initial aggressor; or

(ii) a police officer or peace officer or a person assisting a police
officer or a peace officer at the latter`s direction, acting pursuant to
section 35.30; or

(c) He or she reasonably believes that such other person is committing
or attempting to commit a burglary, and the circumstances are such that
the use of deadly physical force is authorized by subdivision three of
section 35.20.

Well. Even with New York's duty to retreat, Zimmerman would have had a strong self-defense story that the prosecution never proved to be false. Here is the Times Liz Alvarette in today's paper:

At the trial, the fight between Mr. Martin and Mr. Zimmerman that
preceded the shooting produced a muddle of testimony — and grist for
reasonable doubt. It remained unclear who had thrown the first punch and
at what point Mr. Zimmerman drew his gun. There were no witnesses to
the shooting and no definitive determination of which man could be heard
yelling for help in the background of a 911 call.

The only version of events came from Mr. Zimmerman, who did not take the
stand, denying prosecutors a chance to cross-examine him. His
statements to the police spoke for him at the trial. Defense lawyers
also had a powerful piece of evidence in photographs of Mr. Zimmerman’s
injuries: a bloody nose and cuts and lumps on the back of his head.

...

The evidence of Mr. Zimmerman’s injuries may have helped his case, but
it was not legally necessary. He needed to show only that he feared
great bodily harm or death when he pulled out his gun, which he was
carrying legally, and shot Mr. Martin.

“Classic self-defense,” Mr. O’Mara said.

Soon after Mr. Zimmerman was arrested, there appeared to be a chance
that the defense would invoke a provision of Florida self-defense law
known as Stand Your Ground. Ultimately it was not part of Mr. O’Mara’s
courtroom strategy, though it did play a pivotal role immediately after
the shooting.

The provision, enacted by the Florida Legislature in 2005 and since
adopted by more than 20 other states, allows people who fear great harm
or death not to retreat, even if they can safely do so. If an attacker
is retreating, people are still permitted to use deadly force.

"If an attacker
is retreating, people are still permitted to use deadly force".

Without researching that I will bet that is more Times fantasizing. Life and the lkaw are full of surprises but where is the imminent threat of grave harm if the attacker is retreating? Legal eagles? Pressing on:

The provision also allows a defendant claiming self-defense to seek civil and criminal immunity at a pretrial hearing.

Mr. O’Mara said he did not rely on Stand Your Ground as a defense because Mr. Zimmerman had no option to retreat.

"Retreat was not an option" would have been the argument made in a New York court.

We don't honestly expect the Times editors to let facts or the law interfere with their fantasies, but I an keeping my own dream alive.

Who should bear the burden of proving or disproving self-defense in
criminal cases, and by what quantum (preponderance of the evidence,
clear and convincing evidence, or beyond a reasonable doubt), is an
interesting question. But on this point, Florida law is precisely the
same as in nearly all other states: In 49 of the 50 states, once the
defense introducing any evidence of possible self-defense, the
prosecution must disprove self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department said Sunday that it was restarting its investigation into the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin to consider possible separate hate crime charges against George Zimmerman.

Possible hurdles:

In a statement on Sunday, the Justice Department said that now that the
state criminal trial was over, it would continue its examination of the
circumstances in the shooting. “Experienced federal prosecutors will
determine whether the evidence reveals a prosecutable violation of any
of the limited federal criminal civil rights statutes within our
jurisdiction,” the statement said.

The department sets a high bar for such a prosecution. Three former
Justice Department officials who once worked in the department’s Civil Rights Division,
which is handling the inquiry, said Sunday that the federal government
must clear a series of difficult legal hurdles before it could move to
indict Mr. Zimmerman.

“It is not enough if it’s just a fight that escalated,” said Samuel Bagenstos,
who until 2011 served as the principal deputy assistant attorney
general in the division. “The government has to prove beyond reasonable
doubt that the defendant acted willfully with a seriously culpable state
of mind” to violate Mr. Martin’s civil rights.

“We have to prove the highest standard in the law,” Mr. Holder said at a
news conference in April 2012. “Something that was reckless, that was
negligent, does not meet that standard. We have to show that there was
specific intent to do the crime with the requisite state of mind.”

Florida failed to get traction with their 'state of mind' charges, but who knows?

The Times offers this example of a successful prosecution:

Criminal charges under federal hate crime law have increased
significantly during the Obama administration. Between 2009 and 2012,
the Justice Department prosecuted 29 percent more such cases than in the
previous three fiscal years. Last month in Seattle, for example, Jamie
Larson, 49, pleaded guilty to federal hate crime charges that he beat a cabdriver, who was from India and was wearing a turban.

Mmm - a drunken miscreantbeat a cabbie. Tha assailant had a long criminal record, there were no self-defense issues at all, and there had been no acquital on related criminal charges. Is this meant to inspire confidence that Zimmerman can be prosecuted? Or does it show us what a real hate crime might look like?

The Times does not vex their readers with news that came out during discovery in the Zimmerman trial:

After interviewing nearly three dozen people in
the George Zimmerman murder case, the FBI found no evidence that racial
bias was a motivating factor in the shooting of Trayvon Martin, records
released Thursday show.

Even the lead detective in the case, Sanford Det. Chris
Serino, told agents that he thought Zimmerman profiled Trayvon because
of his attire and the circumstances — but not his race.

Serino saw Zimmerman as “having little hero complex, but not as a racist.”

WASHINGTON — When President Obama
proclaimed that those who commit sexual assault in the military should
be “prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court-martialed, fired,
dishonorably discharged,” it had an effect he did not intend: muddying
legal cases across the country.

In at least a dozen sexual assault cases since the president’s remarks
at the White House in May, judges and defense lawyers have said that Mr.
Obama’s words as commander in chief amounted to “unlawful command
influence,” tainting trials as a result. Military law experts said that
those cases were only the beginning and that the president’s remarks
were certain to complicate almost all prosecutions for sexual assault.

“Unlawful command influence” refers to actions of commanders that could
be interpreted by jurors as an attempt to influence a court-martial, in
effect ordering a specific outcome. Mr. Obama, as commander in chief of
the armed forces, is considered the most powerful person to wield such
influence.

The White House has offered the "He was just running his mouth again, who knew anyone was listening?" defense:

White House officials said Mr. Obama’s remarks, made in response to a
reporter’s question, were meant to demonstrate his concern about the
issue and were not intended to recommend penalties for offenders.

“The president was absolutely not trying to be prescriptive,” said
Kathryn Ruemmler, the White House counsel. “He was listing a range of
examples of how offenders could be held accountable. The president
expects all military personnel who are involved in any way in the
military justice process to exercise their independent professional
judgment.”

Do tell. Let's have a bit more context. This is in response to a question about sexual; assailt in the military at the May 7 press conference with President Park of South Korea:

So bottom line is I have no tolerance for this. I have communicated
this to the Secretary of Defense. We're going to communicate this again
to folks up and down the chain in areas of authority, and I expect
consequences.

So I don’t want just more speeches or awareness programs or training
but, ultimately, folks look the other way. If we find out somebody is
engaging in this stuff, they've got to be held accountable --
prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court-martialed, fired,
dishonorably discharged. Period. It's not acceptable.

Obama is not only a graduate of Harvard Law School but taught for
years at the University of Chicago Law School, two of the most
prestigious legal institutions in the country. Nor is he at this stage a
neophyte; he’s been president four years. Surely, he should have
understood the impact of his words here.

Alas, this is a case of his multiple roles being in conflict. As the
nation’s head of state and as the Democratic party’s leader, he had to
say these things about the outrage of sexual assault, let alone that
committed by top officers. As commander-in-chief of the armed forces, it
was also imperative to make it clear that this behavior can not and
will not be tolerated. But that role also brings with it a
responsibility to not prejudice trials that would come before military
juries. He failed in that responsibility.

“This was not racially motivated,” Pierce told the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution. “Cobb County police are investigating this like
any other crime.”

The fight between Chellew and his four assailants apparently started over gang identification.

According
to the warrant, Chellew flashed blue colors and claimed allegiance to
the “Crips” street gang. Three of the suspects were dressed in red, the
colors affiliated with the “Crips” longtime rival, the “Bloods.” The
exchange was captured on the station’s surveillance cameras.

Per this DOJ overview of Georgia gang activity a Crips/Bloods thing could be accurate:

Bloods and Crips

Bloods and Crips are two of the largest and most violent associations of
criminal street gangs in the United States. The membership of both gangs is
primarily African American. Both gangs are a collection of structured and
unstructured gangs commonly known as sets. Generally, gang sets are established
by an entrepreneurial individual who runs the set and recruits members to
distribute drugs, primarily cocaine. Bloods and Crips distribute drugs in
California and many other states including Georgia.

...

Georgia's gang problem is unusual. Many gangs in Georgia are hybrid gangs
(made up of members from different ethnic backgrounds) and are not nationally
affiliated. These gangs sometimes call themselves Bloods but use symbolism from
other gangs. Gangs composed primarily of Caucasians sometimes take the name and
exhibit the symbols of nationally affiliated Hispanic or African American gangs.

"Sixty-five percent of the gang members in Cobb are Hispanic or Latino,
15 percent are African-American or black, and the remaining 20 percent
is made up of Caucasians and a smattering of Asians".

However, we have a "Who are you going to believe, the police or your lying eyes?" problem with this detail from the current AJC story:

According
to the warrant, Chellew flashed blue colors and claimed allegiance to
the “Crips” street gang. Three of the suspects were dressed in red, the
colors affiliated with the “Crips” longtime rival, the “Bloods.”

Maybe they had time for a wardrobe change or the pictures are from some other source entirely, but the AJC photos accompanying the story (helpfully labeled "Cobb County Sheriff") show two of the four youths in blue t-shirts. A third is in gray and the last is in white. Red pants, maybe, like these Crips?

Well, I am hardly an authority on street gang fashion. But this "nothing to see here as long as you're color-blind" explanation codes not fully allay my concern that the authorities want this to be about anything but race. Presumably, we will eventually learn about the victim's lengthy gang-related rap sheet.

We will see if the low key O'Mara approach works well as a contrast to the fiery prosecutors.

In other non-news, let's just be grateful this criminal profiler didn't have a gun or some innocent teen might have been killed (I am assuming the young men took umbrage at the presence of a creepy-ass cracker and reacted in a manner that Florida prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda seems to consider to be appropriate). The story doesn't fit The Narrative or offer an opportunity for National Edification so we won't be seeing any coverage.

PROSECUTION REBUTTAL: The prosecutor's rebuttal opens with an exhortation to the jury to look into the hearts of Zimmerman and Martin. Wow - the jury can determine that beyond a reasonable doubt?

As to what was in Martin's heart, geez, is this the same prosecution team that quashed all the evidence of Martin's interest in street-fighting?

The prosecutor explains that Zimmerman is guilty of murder because he got out of his car; if he had stayed in his car this would all have been avoided. I think they stole their close from the Direct TV ads exhorting people not to switch to cable:

"When you wait forever for the cable guy, you get bored," he says. "When
you get bored, you start staring out windows. When you start staring
out windows, you see things you shouldn't see." (Our hero sees a body
being loaded into a trunk.) "When you see things you shouldn't see, you
need to vanish. When you need to vanish, you fake your own death." (He
swims away from a boat on fire.) "When you fake your own death, you dye
your eyebrows. And when you dye your eyebrows, you attend your own
funeral as a guy named Phil Shifley. Don't attend your funeral as a guy
named Phil Shifley."

SANFORD, Fla. — With the defense a day away from wrapping up its case, a
widely known expert in forensic pathology, Dr. Vincent Di Maio,
testified on Tuesday that Trayvon Martin’s injuries suggest he was on
top of and leaning over George Zimmerman when Mr. Zimmerman fired his
gun last year.

A witness for the defense, Dr. Di Maio said the gun barrel rested
against Mr. Martin’s sweatshirt, which hung two to four inches away from
Mr. Martin’s chest. The bullet, he said, entered his heart from the
front, in a left to right direction, and plunged into one of his lungs.

“This is consistent with Mr. Zimmerman’s account,” said Dr. Di Maio, the
retired longtime chief medical examiner for Bexar County, Tex., whose
county seat is San Antonio. “That Mr. Martin was over him, leaning
forward, at the time that he was shot.”

Folks who have made an effort to understand the case and the law will find nothing new here. But Lizette Alvarez of the Times makes a bit of a stab at similar attempt to manage expectations:

For supporters of the Martin family, Mr. Martin’s death was part of a
more complex tale of profiling and injustice.

Just so - what kind of a world are we living in that teenage boys can't assault annoying people they identify as "creep-ass crackers"?

But this perception has
run up against the protocols of a criminal trial and Florida’s expansive
self-defense laws. These laws, critics say, give too much leeway to
people who say they acted violently because they felt threatened.

...

In the past two weeks, defense lawyers have chipped away at the
prosecution’s case, legal analysts said, raising the possibility of an
acquittal. The law in Florida allows for the use of force if someone
fears great bodily harm, and prosecutors must prove beyond a reasonable
doubt that Mr. Zimmerman did not act in self-defense.

However, the Times is keeping hope alive!

The twists and turns of the case — its weaknesses and legal
complications — were not a factor for many supporters of the Martin
family, until recently.

“We thought this was an open-and-shut case,” said Mr. Jackson, the pastor in Richmond Heights.

When facts and the law are set aside in favor of The Narrative, sure, many things are open and shut. But I don't know what to make of this cryptic comment:

Mr. Oliver, the Sanford pastor, said he remained optimistic. “You can
feel a little sense that anger is re-emerging,” he said.

He is optimistic because the anger is re-emerging? Dare we ask how he expects to see that anger demonstrated?

The possibility of an acquittal has prompted community leaders,
ministers and law enforcement officials in Miami and Sanford to prepare.
This week in Miami, they will hold a meeting in Miami Gardens, where
Mr. Martin lived, to talk about the complexity of the legal case and
what has happened in the courtroom so far. They are also reaching out to
young people in schools and parks and through Web sites, urging them to
remain calm.

“It is important that we still maintain peace, even though decisions are
not made to our liking,” Mr. Jackson said. “That is our message, and
that is what we are preaching.”

Even the suggestion that trouble may follow an acquittal is fraught with
racial overtones, particularly since much of the preparation is focused
on the black community.

But in cities like Miami, which have experienced racial unrest, the
ministers and activists said it was a reasonable concern. It is better
to be prepared, they say, than caught off guard.

“Everybody wants to know the pulse of the community,” Mr. Jackson said.
“It’s not an insult to ask whether we feel there will be unrest.”

I assume there are members of the political class who will benefit from a bit of creative racial tension.

July 06, 2013

The June jobs report
saw a surge in part-time workers, and the health care law that starts
coming into full effect next year might be in part responsible. The
number of part-time workers for economic reasons climbed to 8.2 million
in June from 7.6 million in March.

The economist Casey B. Mulligan ran through the numbers
on this blog earlier in the week. The Affordable Care Act gives
employers an incentive to hire part-time workers rather than full-time
workers, as they might be compelled to offer health coverage to the
latter, but not the former. That’s why a number of big employers have started offering more temporary or part-time positions.

It also makes part-time jobs more attractive for workers. Say you
currently have a 20-hour-a-week job with no health coverage, and that
you cannot afford to buy insurance on the private market. Soon, the
government will start offering you generous subsidies to buy a plan on
the new health care “exchanges” – meaning, provided your income is low
enough, you get an expensive benefit with taxpayers picking up most of
the tab.

The numbers are here; under Obama, being in the working class will become a part-time job.

WASHINGTON — In polo shirt, shorts and sandals, President Obama
headed to the golf course Friday morning with a couple of old friends,
then flew to Camp David for a long weekend. Secretary of State John Kerry was relaxing at his vacation home in Nantucket.

Those golf balls aren't going to sink themselves. And Ed Driscoll shows that mocking Kerry will never get old, taking us back to 2004 with "Thurston, We Have A Problem".

Others dismissed concerns that employers would drop health coverage without the law’s mandate. The vast majority of large businesses already provide insurance to their workers, without any federal requirements to do so.

Groan. For decades there has been a huge tax incentive for employers to offer health coverage - the cost of health insurance is deductible to the employer as a compensation expense but is not taxable to the employee as income.

Other than for so-called "Cadillac plans" that will still be true under ObamaCare. However, ObamaCare introduces a powerful cross-current - employers can drop their coverage, pay a small-ish fine and let their employees fend for themselves on the new, government-subsidized exchanges, or they can shoulder the expense of health insurance as they have in the past. Folks who run the numbersconclude that the fines are low enough and the subsidies for low-income employees high enough that many firms, and their employees, can achieve a win-win by dropping the company health plan and shifting part of the cost to the government.

Ms. Kliff's notion that a tax-subsidized strategy will still be followed after the tax subsidies are drastically changed does not mesh with contemporary economic thought.

Jason Everman has the unique distinction of being the guy who was kicked out of Nirvana and
Soundgarden, two rock bands that would sell roughly 100 million records
combined. At 26, he wasn’t just Pete Best, the guy the Beatles left
behind. He was Pete Best twice.

Then again, he wasn’t remotely. What Everman did afterward put him far
outside the category of rock’n’roll footnote. He became an elite member
of the U.S. Army Special Forces, one of those bearded guys riding around
on horseback in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban.

WASHINGTON — In a significant setback for President Obama’s signature
domestic initiative, the administration on Tuesday abruptly announced a
one-year delay, until 2015, in his health care law’s mandate that larger
employers provide coverage for their workers or pay penalties. The
decision postpones the effective date beyond next year’s midterm
elections.

The news is so contrary to the Times world-fiction on so many fronts that their Metaphor Masher has failed:

Obama Seeks New U.S. Role in Climate Debate

WASHINGTON — When President Obama barged into a meeting of leaders from
Brazil, China, India and other countries at a climate conference in
Copenhagen in December 2009, he managed to extract a last-minute
agreement to set a goal to limit the rise in global temperatures.

A "high water mark" and then "downhill"? Surely waters recede after hitting a high water mark, whether anyone has headed for the hills or not. And isn't that just what Obama promised in 2008?

The dire situation has prompted the editors to run guest pieces repudiating their own efforts at undermining Bush's war on terror. Here is a discussion of a Treasury program meant to track terrorist funds:

When European data privacy advocates and politicians objected to the
program, the eminent French counterterrorism judge Jean-Louis Burguière
was assigned to review the program in detail for the European Parliament. He reported in 2008, and again in 2010, that Treasury had complied with civil liberties protections.

Their point?

The use of the data was legal, limited, targeted, overseen and audited.
The program set a gold standard for how to protect the confidential data
provided to the government. Treasury legally gained access to large
amounts of Swift’s financial-messaging data (which is the banking
equivalent of telephone metadata) and eventually explained it to the
public at home and abroad.

It could remain a model for how to limit the government’s use of mass
amounts of data in a world where access to information is necessary to
ensure our security while also protecting privacy and civil liberties.

And the Times coverage?

The Times’ revelation did damage to the effectiveness of the program
while ignoring the innovations that balanced security and civil
liberties.

Yes, but it bashed Bush, which was Mission Critical. Well, that was then.

July 02, 2013

Michelle Obama shows her solidarity with Incarceration Nation by explaining that being in the White House is like being in prison. A "really nice prison". With nice jailhouse rock. Oh, well - eventually Michelle will be set free and forced to accept multi-million dollar book deals during her parole period. I do hope the poor dear can hold up 'til then. Not to mention the rest of us, and I note that these guys were off by three years.

As to actual people in actual prisons, well, fortunately Michelle's comment was not made by a white Republican or it is all we would hear about and the sidewalks would be unsafe, etc.

July 01, 2013

SANFORD, Fla. — As the trial of George Zimmerman enters its second week
on Monday, it appears that the prosecution is struggling to meet the
burden of proving him guilty of second-degree murder, legal analysts
said.

The first week of the trial featured testimony from prosecution
witnesses that in many instances bolstered Mr. Zimmerman’s argument of
self-defense rather than the state’s case, the analysts said.

“When you are talking about state witnesses as if they are defense
witnesses, that is a problem for the State of Florida,” said Diana
Tennis, a prominent Orlando defense lawyer who is following the case.
“And any time you end each day with either a zero-sum game or the
defense coming out ahead, that’s a problem when you’re the prosecution.”

On the civil liberties scorecard the NSA may be all-seeing, but America just can't seem to stage a show trial.